Will mammoths roam the earth again?
An audacious claim from scientists in Siberia suggests that blood found in the corpse of a 10,000-year-old mammoth could be cloned and reproduced.
If the claims of Russian scientists turn out to be true, the ‘Jurassic Park’ concept of extinct animals being brought back to life through their DNA could be a step closer today.
But instead of dinosaurs it is the woolly mammoth that could make its return.
Russian scientists claim they have discovered 10,000-year-old blood inside the carcass of prehistoric woolly female mammoth.
Sealed under sheets of ice, the Russian team who made the discovery on islands off the northern coast of Siberia claim it was preserved to the point that it was “dark” and “flowing”. Muscle tissue was also found in the creature which was aged between 50 and 60 when she died.
The discovery lends itself to the startling possibility that the blood could be cloned.
Semyon Grigoriev, head of the Museum of Mammoths of the Institute of Applied Ecology of the North at the North Eastern Federal University told The Siberian Times: “We were really surprised to find mammoth blood and muscle tissue.”
He hailed it as “the best preserved mammoth in the history of palaeontology.”
“It is the first time we managed to obtain mammoth blood. No-one has ever seen before how the mammoth’s blood flows.
“The mammoth was found in an ice tomb in the New Siberian Islands, or Novosibirsk Islands, and parts of the carcass are especially well preserved because they remained entirely frozen for 10,000 years. “It has been preserved thanks to the special conditions, due to the fact that it did not defrost and then freeze again.”
“We suppose that the mammoth fell into water or got bogged down in a swamp, could not free herself and died.”
Blood of life
But it is the discovery of blood and muscle tissue that is most startling.
Dr Grigoriev said it was “the most astonishing case in my entire life,” and could be a boost to researchers who dream of cloning the animal.
He said: “When we broke the ice beneath her stomach, the blood flowed out from there, it was very dark.”How was it possible for it to remain in liquid form? And the muscle tissue is also red, the colour of fresh meat.”
To the laboratory
The carcass weighing around one tonne has been moved to the Siberian mainland and is being kept in ice storage.
Last year, Mr Grigoryev’s Northeastern Federal University signed a deal with cloning pioneer Hwang Woo-Suk of South Korea’s Sooam Biotech Research Foundation, who in 2005 cloned a dog for the first time.
Mammoth specialists from South Korea, Russia and the United States will now study what remains of the carcass.